"The people of Baghdad do not need statistics to tell them that they are living through terror unimaginable in the West.

"Trips near government offices or police stations are avoided, the towering concrete blast walls that surround them testament to the lethal threat passing nearby can pose. Many parents keep their children indoors for safety. It is rare to see the traditional game of tuki, an Arab version of hopscotch, on the streets. Men are now the majority at the local markets as they insist their wives stay away in case they are targeted by bombers.

"The amazing realisation is that somehow normal life continues. Shops open, people go to work. Even the Crazy Frog mobile phone ring tone has become the latest fad in Baghdad.

"But conversation in the city is dominated by the bombs left in cars near markets, the drive-by shootings, the kidnappings or even the water melon seller with the poisoned produce to be given for free to passing policemen.

And then there are the suicide bombs* -- around 130 of them across Iraq in the first six months of this year alone -- fuelled by a seemingly endless procession of young men, drawn from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen or Syria.**

Parents are alarmed not only for the children's safety but the mental scars the violence will leave.

An English teacher, Ahmad Ali, said he had watched his two children playing in the garden, chasing each other between the gardenias.

"'You die,' he said his four-year-daughter shouted and her cousin fell over on the grass. 'I asked them what game it was. They told me they were playing American soldiers fighting criminals. I almost cried that this is their idea of making fun.'"


*
"About 400 suicide bombings have shaken Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003, and suicide now plays a role in two out of every three insurgent bombings. In May, an estimated 90 suicide bombings were carried out in the war-torn country — nearly as many as the Israeli government has documented in the conflict with Palestinians since 1993."

**
Robert Pape, author of Dying to Win: "The central fact is that, overwhelmingly, suicide terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide terrorist campaign -- over 95 percent of all the incidents -- has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw."

The American Conservative: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush's policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don’t have to fight them here.

Pape: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.